Abstract
Thailand, especially the south, more frequently faced natural disaster with more
severity which cause loss of life and property of affected population and also have
effect on public health system. Development of disaster management system is of
paramount importance to minimize such effect, however, no study of public health
disaster management in Thailand was found. This project studied 3 southern provinces
that have past experience on disaster management namely Phuket, Nakorn Sri
Thammarat and Songkhla to learn from their direct experience in order to recommend
disaster management for public health sector. The study included disaster prevention,
preparedness, response, mitigation, recovery and development during pre-disaster,
disaster and post-disaster phases. Methodology used in the study was mixed method,
quantitative and qualitative. This study also emphasized on the participation of the
participants from public health and relevant organization to build their capacity in
disaster-related data collection, management, analysis and utilization and team learning
by sharing experience among multi-disciplinary participants. Data collection was carried
out by document review, focused group discussion, in-depth interview and questionnaire
survey among executive, practitioner and the affected people.
The study found that the 3 provinces had developed from passive disaster
management focusing on public health service to active, integrated disaster management
with collaboration with relevant organizations at various levels from local, national to
international. Phuket had its forte in disaster preparedness especially with capacity
building and resource management and collaboration with academic sector. Its strong
leaders can also mobilize resource and link to national and international authorities.
Nakorn Sri Thammarat had strength in disaster response with multi-sectoral collaboration
and civil society participation while Songkhla excelled in community engagement to
prevent and mitigate the disaster with its strong community self-sustainable identity and
participatory public policy mechanism. However the three settings still had room for
development in the area of risk communication, information and early warning system,
systematic, effective aid management, long-termed recovery that integrated with
community development and knowledge management to improve disaster management
in the future.
The challenging recommendation to public health system from the experience of
these three settings is; public health system has to shift its paradigm from “medical
disaster management” to “health disaster management”. It should be more actively
engaged in integrated multi-sectoral disaster management with the multi-disciplinary
relevant organization including the civil society. Public health system, its facility and its human resource have to be inclusive as a part of the community in disaster
management especially in prevention and preparedness.
